With the increased popularity and consumer trust of online transactions, more and more consumers are doing business over the internet from their computers. As a result of any transaction over the internet, information is created in the form of data that characterizes the transaction, the transaction participants, and many of the circumstances and conditions surrounding the transaction. It has become customary to record and study this transaction data for the benefit of future business decisions and future internet offerings in general. However, with the increasing number of internet users worldwide the data generated by these network interactions is massive and voluminous. This data must be organized in order for it to be useful to businesses and consumers alike. Advances in database creation and management have provided opportunities for data aggregation and more timely use of accumulated data.
Typically, a database user will decide the attributes that they believe are useful for a given study. The database user will form a table of user attributes, transaction attributes, and product attributes that they believe are relevant to the study. They will then begin to collect values for storage within the table. Often times the data that is available is already in a table that has been collected prior to the conception of the study. Large entities or businesses maintain databases. Over time these databases become very large. Such entities and businesses may have maintained such databases for many years and the data contained therein can be studied after the fact at a later date.
An example of obtaining data may be when a customer purchases an item through an online shopping site or a brick and mortar store a significant amount of data (attribute data) relating to that particular purchase is generated. What is needed are methods, systems, and computer program products for generating attribute tables for holding attributes while a corresponding business plan is in an approval process, and methods, systems and computer program products for approving proposed business plans and automatically generating workflow for establishing data tables for aggregating customer profile data in those data tables. Additionally, what is needed are methods, systems, and computer program products for excluding, hiding or removing certain items of information or data from the data contained in one or more attribute tables, even when opting-in to data sharing. An example of removing certain items of information or data from an attribute table is for gifts that customers may purchase for others, but that such a customer would not normally purchase for themselves.
As will be seen, the disclosure provides such methods, systems and computer programs for generating attribute tables for holding attributes while a corresponding business plan is in an approval process, for approving proposed business plans and automatically generating workflow for establishing data tables for aggregating customer profile data in those data tables, and for excluding, hiding or removing certain items of information or data from the data contained in one or more attribute tables, even when opting-in to data sharing in an effective and elegant manner.